The Half-Life 2 Stuttering Problemhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/A central resource for the Half-Life 2 stuttering problem.en-usSat, 25 Feb 2006 07:44:25 -0800Valve Working on Stutter Fix; Test Version Releasedhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2006/2/25/valve-working-on-stutter-fix-test-version-released/Some significant news on the stuttering front... A reader sent in a link to a Valve post on the Steam Users Forums that contains <a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=23f8841b4845daa73dfb1030bbf6dc0d&threadid=403258&highlight=stutter">details of an upcoming stuttering fix</a> being worked on by Valve. Here's an excerpt:<blockquote><i>A fix for the stuttering problem is currently in development on Steam Beta.<br><br>If you have experienced this problem in the past and would like to test the updates on Steam Beta, please follow the instructions below to start Steam Beta and run through a scenario that would previously stutter for you in and see if that problem still occurs.</i></blockquote><a href="http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Friends_Beta#Stuttering">Early reports</a> are not universally positive but some are reporting significant improvement. Valve is requesting feedback on this patch which can be submitted at the <a href="http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Friends_Beta#Stuttering">Developers Wiki</a>.Sat, 25 Feb 2006 07:44:25 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2006/2/25/valve-working-on-stutter-fix-test-version-released/Stuttering Pollhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/27/stuttering-poll/In an effort to determine how many are still experiencing stuttering, a Half-Life 2 user has put up a poll allowing people to vote on the matter. While certainly not scientifically accurate, the results are nonetheless interesting. You can vote here:
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<a href="http://soulcake.freestarthost.com/poll.htm">http://soulcake.freestarthost.com/poll.htm</a>Thu, 27 Jan 2005 05:44:10 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/27/stuttering-poll/It's Back With A Vengeancehttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/18/its-back-with-a-vengeance/Just when I thought that my stuttering ills had been mostly cured, they're back and then some. I recently upgraded my sound card from a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX to a <a href="http://www.soundblaster.com/products/Audigy4pro/">Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro</a>. The sound card works beautifully in all my games and audio apps with the exception of Half-Life 2 where I now experience extreme stuttering as well as distorted and corrupted sound effects followed by a complete system freeze within minutes of starting a new game. This distortion is accompanied by <a href="http://www.myershall.com/hl2/exit%20menu.JPG" target="_blank">missing buttons</a> and <a href="http://www.myershall.com/hl2/loadmenu.jpg" target="_blank">UI elements</a> in Half-Life 2's menus forcing me to quit by bringing up the console.
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This is the same widely reported problem that I previously fixed by adjusting my <a href="http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=8&var1=0&var2=138">PCI Latency Timer</a> BIOS setting which no longer has any affect on this issue. I can rarely make it out of the train station on the first level before my system is totally frozen.
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After spending hours troubleshooting this problem, the only cure I've found is to disable anti-aliasing, which considering <a href="http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/#systemspecs">my system specs</a> is entirely unacceptable. The recently released <a href="http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst/index.html">ATI CATALYST 5.1 drivers</a> made no difference.Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:15:50 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/18/its-back-with-a-vengeance/Patch Improvements Revisitedhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/11/patch-improvements-revisited/I have solved my crashing problem by lowering my <a href="http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=8&var1=0&var2=138">PCI Latency Timer</a> BIOS setting to 32 from its default of 64. Since doing this I have been able to appreciate the improvements in the most recent patch.
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This patch has made a significant improvement in the stuttering issue affecting my system. While a few hitches remain, the game is completely enjoyable now in the areas that I have seen so far. I achieved the best results by setting <i>mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware</i> to <i>0</i>.
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I will continue to post updates as I progress through the game and receive additional feedback from the community.Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:12:10 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/11/patch-improvements-revisited/New Patch Resultshttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/11/new-patch-results/Well, I spoke too soon. While the game seems to have less hitching than before, I am now experiencing complete system freezes with looping sounds at certain points in the game.
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My system is 100% stable and flawlessly passes extended runs of the <a href="http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm">Prime95</a> torture test and <a href="http://www.memtest.org/">Memtest86</a>. My system is not overclocked and I have great temps on the components in my system. I have absolutely no problems running Unreal Tournament 2004, FarCry, DOOM 3, Painkiller and World of Warcraft among many other games that I own.
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My gut tells me that this is a driver problem triggered by something that the Source engine is doing. In Windows NT based OSes, it is impossible for a user mode process to directly cause a total system freeze. However, a user mode process can certainly trigger a bug in kernel mode processes like drivers which can lead to a system freeze. I am going to continue looking into this.Tue, 11 Jan 2005 06:27:24 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/11/new-patch-results/Valve Releases Major Patchhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/10/valve-releases-major-patch/Valve has <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&id=386">released a major patch</a> that contains many fixes related to stuttering issues. Preliminary results look promising on my system. I will post a more detailed analysis once I do additional testing. Launch or restart Steam to automatically receive the update.Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:05:22 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/10/valve-releases-major-patch/New Stuttering Videohttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/2/new-stuttering-video/Valve has been quiet since the last patch, but rumors are circulating that another patch will be posted soon. In the meantime I have created a <a href="http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/HL2Stutter.wmv">video that clearly illustrates the stuttering problem</a> as it appears on my system. This video was captured using <a href="http://www.fraps.com/">Fraps</a> and is in <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp?displang=en">Windows Media Video 9</a> format.Sun, 02 Jan 2005 08:02:28 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2005/1/2/new-stuttering-video/Valve Releases New Stuttering Patchhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/22/valve-releases-new-stuttering-patch/A <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&id=384">Steam update</a> was just released that claims to fix a cause of the stuttering issue:
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Fixed sound stuttering problems caused by thread contention in sound system
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This update did nothing to fix either the slowdown or stuttering problems on my system. If anything, the slowdown now appears to be worse than before.Wed, 22 Dec 2004 19:33:08 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/22/valve-releases-new-stuttering-patch/Update From Valvehttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/20/update-from-valve/Valve's DougV has posted <a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=206390&perpage=15&pagenumber=42">an update</a> on the Steam Users Forums:
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We're still working on a fix and hope to have something available soon (but not before it's ready ;-)).
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As of this morning, we've got 506 (open) Incidents in our Support database, we went through and opened all the tickets that were ever created (resolved or unresolved). If you have a ticket about this problem and have not attached an ms32info report, please do so (only 1/4 of the tickets included this info...it's not required but it's good info to for the dev team).
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We also found someone near our offices that is having the problem and we are scheduling him to come in with their PC this week.
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</blockquote>Mon, 20 Dec 2004 14:43:32 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/20/update-from-valve/A Call to Actionhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/15/a-call-to-action/In <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=189238&perpage=15&pagenumber=47">DougV's post from yesterday</a> he claims, "There are currently less than 200 open tickets in our support incident database for the audio stuttering problem". Apparently my personal correspondence with a Valve engineer confirming the problem, and the hundreds of thousands of forum posts on this topic are not enough to convince Valve that this problem is widespread. This site has been on the front pages of <a href="http://slashdot.org/">Slashdot</a>, <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com/">Blue's News</a>, <a href="http://www.voodooextreme.com/">Voodoo Extreme</a>, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/">GameSpot</a> and numerous other enthusiast sites and has received over 600,000 views.
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To show Valve the extent of this problem, we need to play by their rules. Anyone experiencing the stuttering or slowdown problem should submit a ticket in Valve's support database by using the following link:
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<a href="http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php">Tell Valve About Your Stuttering Problem</a>Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:11:47 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/15/a-call-to-action/Valve Update & Thread Lockinghttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/14/valve-update-thread-locking/Valve's DougV has posted <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=189238&perpage=15&pagenumber=47">a final update</a> in the "<a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=189238&perpage=15&pagenumber=1">Stuttering problems in HL2 update</a>" thread and then locked it. I take issue with several of the points made in this post and it is clear that this issue is being continually mishandled. Take the following snippet for example:
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We did not see this problem during testing.
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I have trouble believing this considering that the stuttering problem was evident on <a href="http://www.valvesoftware.com/people.php">Gary McTaggart</a>'s own computer, a Valve engineer on the Source engine. The following is a snippet from my IM conversations with him after he put in the first fix that corrects the stuttering but created <a href="#PatchAnalysis">the slowdown problem</a>:
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[09:02 PM] GaryMcT: I didn't realize how bad it was until I now see it fixed. :)
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I am a professional software engineer, and have cut Valve a lot of slack for this problem as I know the complexities of software development quite well. However, I am beginning to lose interest in completing Half-Life 2 primarily because of Valve's poor community management as of late.Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:23:32 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/14/valve-update-thread-locking/Status Update From Valvehttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/14/status-update-from-valve/Valve's DougV has posted <a href="http://steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=7ee61b55f7ec9d038bdd1cac14b50efe&threadid=189238&perpage=15&pagenumber=44">an update</a> on the <a href="http://steampowered.com/forums/">Steam Users Forums</a>. Here are the most relevant pieces:
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I appreciate that people are still having problems with audio stuttering I know it's frustrating that we haven't released a "magic" fix but this problem *is* at the top of our list to fix and we've got a dedicated team working on it. This is a tricky problem as you can guess by reading all 650 posts in this thread...people aren't all having exactly the same problem and the solutions people have found are different on most machines.
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We take a great deal of pride in our work and it's just as frustrating to us that you can't enjoy the game that we've worked so hard on. We ARE working on this and hope to have a fix to release shortly.
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</blockquote>Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:35:09 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/14/status-update-from-valve/New Potential Solution From Valvehttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/7/new-potential-solution-from-valve/Valve's DougV mentions a <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=189238&perpage=15&pagenumber=21">new potential solution</a> in a post on the <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/">Steam Users Forums</a>. For users experiencing audio stuttering and "Memory cannot be read" errors, installing the latest version of the Miles Sound System may fix the problem. Full details on acquiring and installing this are in his post. I installed this and it had no impact on my stuttering issue.Tue, 07 Dec 2004 06:37:40 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/7/new-potential-solution-from-valve/A Small Update From Valvehttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/6/a-small-update-from-valve/A reader sent in the following email that he just received from Valve's Yahn Bernier:
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No ETA yet, we're still testing stuff. It's the #1 thing we are looking at.
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Yahn
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</blockquote>Mon, 06 Dec 2004 13:19:03 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/6/a-small-update-from-valve/New Potential Solutionhttp://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/6/new-potential-solution/For people experiencing severe stuttering, a<a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=198096&perpage=15&pagenumber=1"> new potential solution</a> has been found and detailed on the <a href="http://www.steampowered.com/forums/">Steam Users Forums</a>. This had no effect on my stuttering issue, but may be useful for those with severe and constant stuttering.
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Valve has been very quiet on the stuttering issue this past week. My emails and IMs to Gary have gone unanswered. I am hopeful that things will pick up this week.Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:58:37 -0800http://blep.net/hl2stutter/updates/2004/12/6/new-potential-solution/